Stephen and Timothy are the filmmakers collectively known as the Brothers Quay. They are Philadelphia born twins who seemingly have never separated. They have always worked together creating short animated films such as Street of Crocodiles and The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer. They even contributed animation to Peter Gabriels Sledgehammer video and created numerous other videos and commercials. They first entered the feature film realm with their live action film Institute Benjamenta and after ten long years they are releasing their second feature, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes. The film is even more beautiful and disturbing than their past works. It is the story of an opera singer who is abducted by a malevolent Dr. Droz. Felisberto, an innocent piano tuner, is summoned to Droz's secluded villa to service his strange musical automatons.

Daniel Robert Epstein: I read the two of you like to be credited together.

Brothers Quay: Yeah. Its easier. Its only because you discover that when they then think they know whos talking, theyve got it completely wrong. That or we finish each others sentences which makes it doubly difficult.

DRE: What was the inspiration for The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes?

BQ: I think the first molecule or cell was from the Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA. Its a curious museum that has a dubious quality of people not knowing whether the things in it are actually real or slyly fabricated. It courts that fine line between being utterly fictional or documentary. There was a story in there about a famous Cameroonian rain ant who goes to the forest floor and inhales the spores that fall from the sky. Upon sniffing it, it climbs the stalk, clamps its mandibles around the stalk and then dies. But the fungus carries on eating out the brain and then this violent stalk explodes with more spores that fall down for the next unsuspecting floor foraging animal. That became a metaphor about madness in the broad sense of the word. That was the selling point. Also since weve worked quite a lot in the theatre and the opera, we wanted very much to make a film that had an operatic-ness about it. Also it was one of the requirements from Channel 4 when we first approached them. They said, If youre to do something with us again, it will have to be a recognizable genre and have actual dialogue, not monologues [as in their first feature] Institute Benjamenta. We said, Sure but in the end they rejected the script anyway.

DRE: So they didnt have anything to do with it?

BQ: They had nothing to do with it all. So it coasted for almost eight years and then Terry Gilliam came along and he put his name to the project as executive producer, even though he wasnt going to be paid any money. Instantly the Germans put money on the table, then the French, then the Japanese and lastly the British. It was a long, slow process of getting it off the ground.

DRE: I read that it might have been inspired by the book The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, is that true?

BQ: Well it was a great reference point but we werent allowed to have the rights. You looked over your shoulder at it as an homage. I think it would be wrong to say the film was based off of it although there are elements we like about it and probably echo.

DRE: The backgrounds in Piano Tuner were quite beautiful, what did you use to create them?

BQ: They were digital. It was a condition of the budget that we shoot in hi-def because were shooting animation on a digital still camera then the two would be married digitally and then put out on 35 mm. It was cheaper to work that way.

DRE: Have you guys done a lot of the digital work over the years?

BQ: Yeah, weve been working digitally for the last six. Not so much in special effects, more of it being a way of doing animation. The special effects in the film are as if they were from the silent film period, where youd rewind in the camera. Things that Buster Keaton or [George] Melies could do.

DRE: Is it difficult to make video look as good as film?

BQ: Yeah. It was fine. We adapted instantly to this. Were not that precious about 35 mm.

DRE: The first ten minutes were very confusing, which I expected going into it. Then once the piano tuner shows you begin to figure it out. What do you like about that element of putting the audience on guard?

BQ: I think its a form of discovering within their own velocity of how they see it. A certain disorientation is pleasurable, but I can see it also being irritating. Those who fall out will fall out. Its true. Working like that, youre going to lose people probably right away, but it shouldnt be difficult to stay in material like that. It unfolds in its own time. You just have to wait for that moment. Its very difficult for us to in any of the films, to have a prescription for what the audience would like. Ultimately, you decide on at what level youre going to release the narrative, what speed, what tempo. I dont mind that. When I see a film like that, I dont panic. I just wait. You have to wait to see what unfolds and how it unfolds.

DRE: Before you started making features, both of you did everything for the animation?

BQ: Oh yeah. Sets, costumes, dcor, photography, lighting, the editing. The only things we didnt really do were the music and sound.

DRE: When you guys started doing computer graphics, do you guys do all of that by yourselves?

BQ: No. We did the animation in camera. Theres nothing post-production on that. Post-production was done on some of the live action where we have a bluescreen and they would look out onto the sea and the sea was dropped in digitally afterwards. The sky was dropped in digitally sometimes when it was blue. When Felisberto would go to the automatons some of the images would be dropped into the little chapels. Wed have a greenscreen in there and wed shoot our animation, which is dropped in afterwards in post-production but you cant tell. Its very good. Even we were shocked.

DRE: What still excites you about putting animation into your work?

BQ: I think the animation in Benjamenta is invisible. But in this one, we wanted very clearly to open up a space for the alternative realm and to see how that would contaminate the live action realm. Just see if there would be this tension, this slippage or this undertow of that world being absorbed into this world. Was the live action world really just an adjunct to what the automaton was conceiving or vice versa? Were they infecting each other? The first night Felisberto falls asleep, he hears these sound effects and he cant tell whether hes dreaming or running at the same time, but in reverse. Its all this confusion, which is a little deliberate.

DRE: Even though youve done some short works since Benjamenta, how come it took so long to get your second feature going?

BQ: The money. Ten years to make Benjamenta and ten years to raise the funds for this film. The moneys never just around the corner with us.

DRE: When I speak with animators that do live action work, they often say they find the biggest pleasure is working with the actors. Do you guys enjoy that?

BQ: Yeah. Its nice when you have the chance to explore the part with them. We had a lot of problems with this film because in order to get the project done, the live action shoot was reduced from six weeks to five weeks. So there was a massive rush which isnt kind to either the production team or the actors. Our way of working is to have a chance to open up a little bit and explore. For us the studio is a laboratory situation. Nobodys looking. Its just the two of us on a film set with live actors. Youve got 44 people in tow looking at you for direction. To say something like, Hold on. Were going to do a little experiment here and discover something just cant happen.

DRE: Do you find theres more nuance with real actors than with puppets?

BQ: Theres a difference because you work with the puppets face. They work more as a mask so you have to read them. With an actor you have much greater nuances. Also there was more dialogue in this film, so in a sense you can really enter their characters, while with the puppets, theres an opaqueness that we like about them. It gives them that otherness and eeriness that youre never going to get behind their skin.

DRE: Do you feel that actors ground the film in more reality?

BQ: I think its pretty natural that they do.

DRE: For something to be grounded in reality is very new for you two.

BQ: Yeah, I agree. Benjamenta was just a strange boarding school for servants. But you realize that in that place, that is their reality. It might look like an irreality from a perspective point of view, but even in Piano Tuner, that reality does exist on that estate, in that villa, as it does also for the automatons.

DRE: Whats the casting process for you guys?

BQ: We originally wrote the script for those three actors that you see in the film. The only one left out was Amira Casar, a French contribution. That was done in the last few months before the film. The producers tried to get us to get more expensive people involved and nobody would bite. The Japanese producer wanted Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford or Jeremy Irons. But it didnt work out.

DRE: I know that you guys always use lots of found and organic materials for past films, was it the same with Piano Tuner as well?

BQ: Within the puppet world yes. But the sets for the live action were very theatrical. In terms of Benjamenta, it was actually a real found space, an old, abandoned manor house. Whereas for this, everything was built from scratch in a studio.

DRE: Whenever I talk to filmmakers about the auteur theory, they seem to dance around with their answer. What is your take on it?

BQ: Auteurish. Spell it with quotation marks around it. Its an independent film which is out and out an art form. You cant try to disguise that. The challenge that was thrown at us was to try to make it a little bit more accessible. The UK Film Council said, Dont you want this film to be in 40 cinemas? We said, Well, one is enough for us. Why would you want 39 more?

DRE: You guys have always worked together probably since you were very young.

BQ: Yeah. Film makes you collaborate.

DRE: When you guys have ideas, do you find that theyre very similar to each other?

BQ: Yeah, I think whatever one says doesnt really shock the other because we share the same literature. We share the books on the walls. We bought them together.

DRE: How do you guys split up the duties?

BQ: We all have our disciplines. We can both build the puppets. We can both animate. One has a stronger feeling for the editing. Its really a question of marshalling the forces so that once Timothys editing, Im preparing the next scene and I might be doing the lighting. So its like keeping two things running so you dont lose time. We both do animation. But in the end, youre both sitting down working on the editing, although one of us might predominate. It still is formed by us both.

DRE: Are projects ever brought to you?

BQ: We actually have had people say, Weve written something for you. But weve always trashed them all because they had a strange notion about what they think we would like. Its odd to me because I think they want us to do something straightly horror or ghoulish. Were not ghoulish. We dont feel comfortable with that appellation. In London, Piano Tuner is called gothic and for us thats a total misnomer. Its an English appellation for some reason. Its the way the English respond to the material. The French have a much more generous response and actually see the material for what it is, the fantastic merging with the magic realism. The French seem to know that vocabulary already. They dont have a problem with it.

DRE: How often do you come back to America?

BQ: Last time we were here was ten years ago.

Just yesterday we came to do a lecture at the University of Pennsylvania. They gave us an honorarium to come and talk to the students and show the films.

DRE: Are there still people there you know?

BQ: We have family there like our parents and our little brother came out of the woodwork to scare us.

DRE: Do you still do commercial and video work in London?

BQ: In six years we havent done a commercial.

DRE: Is that because youve been working on this?

BQ: No, after 9/11 the bottom fell out on commercials.

DRE: Over here the music video bottom fell out.

BQ: Thats what we heard.

DRE: Even the biggest directors cant get a good budget anymore. They all do commercials.

BQ: The commercials are doing okay?

DRE: Yeah. Thats because theres so much to sell. When you guys have something that you dont agree on, what is it usually about?

BQ: Invariably you call it a constructive disagreement because we are trying to find the right way to turn. One of us might have been thinking it was going this way and the other one was thinking its going in that direction. Its just a matter of realigning where is it that you really want the film to go. If we go this direction, its going to say this. If we go a little bit that way, its going to realign the map in a way. Sometimes well shoot a scene two ways and leave it for the editing. Usually by then youre very objective and you know whats working. When youre shooting live action; you can do 13 takes with an actor in the space of 15 minutes if the scenes not that long. But with puppetry, if you say you do the sequence your way, it might be a three hour shot, so you think twice before you disagree.

DRE: Would you ever do a fully animated feature?

BQ: No. We wouldnt touch it. I dont think were interested because we would need a team and were too hands on. We could do it by ourselves if we wanted, but it probably would take five years. I dont think anybody would pay to keep us in for five years. They want the product pretty quickly. Also we like working with actors and want to really explore that more. We have another Bruno Schulz project that were trying to get quietly off the ground.

DRE: Is there a plot?

BQ: Its based off the story, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, which is a novella that he wrote. Theres a plot thats as minimal as we want to make it [laughs].

DRE: Ive read that the two of you feel your work is humorless.

BQ: Yeah.

DRE: Is more humor something to strive towards?

BQ: I think were capable of that but I think its better to try to be more depressing.

DRE: Do you guys still watch a lot of films?

BQ: All the time. We might watch more films in the Criterion Collection than whats new. Its just easier because by the time you get home youre exhausted. You just want to sit down quietly. Recently we have liked Igor Kovalyovs short film, Milk. Bla Tarrs work. Guy Maddins work. We rewatched [Aleksandr] Sokurovs Whispering Pages.

DRE: Do you guys watch any American animated stuff?

BQ: Well, with the kids Ive seen Toy Story. Its amazing. Also [Hayao] Miyazakis Spirited Away is wonderful. My little ones five and she doesnt have a problem with it. I look at it and think it is fabulous. It really works at both levels. Its deeply engaging work.

DRE: Do you have any desire to work in other mediums?

BQ: Were now working on two installations, which is something new. I think thats going to open up another angle on the way we approach work. Both of them will include film elements just to keep our hand in it.

I thought Piano Tuner was both good and not so good.
I try to be forgiving with the low budgetness,
but its hard. Its harder when the
filmmaker is quite ambitious usually.
There's definitely things that come across
as bad pretentious poetry, and others
that are successfully beautiful, engaging, mystical, other-worldy...etc.

That's too bad that's all they've said for years,
how they can't get funding these days.
The state of art on earth is just smothered by garbage.
I can try and apologize for America's share of it.
haha.

"There was a story in there about a famous Cameroonian rain ant who goes to the forest floor and inhales the spores that fall from the sky. Upon sniffing it, it climbs the stalk, clamps its mandibles around the stalk and then dies. But the fungus carries on eating out the brain and then this violent stalk explodes with more spores that fall down for the next unsuspecting floor foraging animal. That became a metaphor about madness in the broad sense of the word."